Alan wanted a boat. Specifically, a sailboat, so he could take his wife sailing on Lake Superior, since she was superior to everyone else he'd ever met.
Lucy, his wife, said she'd heard that the new neighbor had an old sailboat that he never used anymore. "I heard he used to go sailing with his wife."
"Oh," said Alan. "What happened with that?"
Lucy gave him one of her smiles that meant, "I don't think you should ask our neighbor that."
The next day, Alan wandered over to the neighbor's house. He remembered Lucy telling him the neighbor's name was Carl? Craig? something beginning with a C, at least. With this and the sailboat at the forefront of his not-too-extensive brain, he rang the doorbell.
It was some kind of classical piece, which put Alan off. Why couldn't the guy just have a normal doorbell like everyone else? He probably had an annoying ringtone on his cell, too.
Carl, if that was his name, opened the door. Alan sensed something off about him. He was holding a beer, and he wasn't overtly gay, but something seemed wrong all the same.
"Hello," said Carl, glancing behind him. "You live next door?"
"Yeah. Yeah, I do." An awkward silence. Alan said, "Welcome to the neighborhood," at the same time that Carl said, "So, anything you need?"
Carl grinned. "Thanks."
Alan thought this was very decent of Carl, and proceeded to ask for the sailboat. Unfortunately, he missed the danger signals -- the flashing of Carl's eyes and the slight shifting of his stance into one more aggressive.
When Alan was done, his neighbor had a smile pasted on his face. "Thank you for asking," said Carl in a low voice, "but I'm not selling my boat to anyone."
Alan hastened to say, "I could just borrow it, you know, for a weekend, or..."
"No," repeated Carl. "I'm not letting anyone have my boat."
"Okay," said Alan, backing off, his hands raised defensively. "I was just, you know, asking."
As soon as he was out of sight, he fairly ran for his own house.
"How did it go?" asked Lucy as he entered the kitchen, breathless.
He told her everything that the two men had said, concluding with, "There goes getting a boat."
"There goes the neighborhood," she replied.
